rgdal release candidate 1.5-9 rev. 1000 ready for testing
I am well aware that I might not be invited to the next imaginary party with my arguing here but maybe the discussion can make use of more real facts again, lower subjective views, and focus on providing support for everyone, on all platforms, without introducing something like a "platform racism" with semi-fake news.
Since some people reached out to me regarding this paragraph, I would like to clarify some things: I am aware that the terms "racism" and "fake news" contain some weight in the current times. I used them because the way how people who use a specific operating system (no matter which one) are treated/grouped reminds me of how mankind groups peoples for whatever reason. This makes me very sad and also somewhat angry, hence my somewhat emotional response on this. Needless to say that I am completely against such categorizations, whether they happen in a human or IT context. What happens in IT in particular is that often vague arguments are added, often poorly informed about the operating system in question, mostly because the person does not use it in person and just head some things about it. Nevertheless, such wordings and discussion should not be used in IT-related mailing lists. I apologize for this and try to not do it again. In addition, I will keep quiet for some time, relaxing my emotions and re-evaluating if putting in the effort, like I did recently, is actually of any help/received positively or just burning time and pushing emotions. Since I use and contribute to R (6 years for now) I was always on the side of "help everyone", "things can get better/easier", "don't create your own island solutions". However, I was hitting some (in my view, not understandable) "walls" recently and I am not sure if I want to continue with this attitude.
On 6 Jun 2020, at 18:09, Roger Bivand wrote:
On Sat, 6 Jun 2020, Patrick Schratz wrote:
Roger, I am sorry for arguing differently so often recently, but if I think that unfair arguing is going on, I have the feeling to correct this. First, again I think that stating "I do not have access to this system" is a weak reason in 2020.
Your view, not mine. I cannot ask my employer to provide such resources.
I've said this previously but again: As a developer/maintainer, there is the implicit burden to set up a dev environment across different platforms. CI helps here.
No, this is not the main burden. For forward-facing packages interfacing external software, it is vastly more important to track developments in that software, by reading development mailing lists, and checking against alpha, beta and RC, as well as tracking master/trunk in periods between releases or when things happening in the external software seems to have the potential to impact existing R packages. This obviously absorbs a lot of time and energy. https://github.com/r-spatial/sf/issues/545 documents where we were in November 2017 with this; there are lots of other examples in posts on the PROJ and GDAL lists, and in email exchanges with others.
For more detailed testing, local emulation is possible via virtual machines which also applies to macOS systems (setting up is harder but not impossible).
Before switching back to macOS a few months ago, I had a virtual machine of macOS running and used it successfully for dev purposes.
The problem with macOS compared to Windows has been that while providing static builds for Windows for three iterations of the Windows RTools build train, with help from CRAN and others, most recently Jeroen, has gone fairly smoothly for more than ten years, macOS moves too quickly. For Simon to keep R itself running has been an uphill struggle, with problems with Fortran, versions of system software under clang (most recently the archaic ssl shipped by Apple), so providing fresh builds of PROJ, GDAL and GEOS has understandably not been a priority. We do not build Windows or macOS PROJ, GDAL or GEOS libraries, we need others, probably close to CRAN, to do this, following CRAN static linking policy. Note that Brian Ripley continues to monitor and check possibilities for static builds of OSGeo software for static linking to CRAN binary packages for macOS, but does not have breakthroughs to report for recent PROJ or GDAL releases, unfortunately. We are very fortunate that he continues to help us with this. rgdal 1.5-9 is partly to resolve your problem, but just as much to resolve problems on Solaris and other corner-case CRAN check platforms. Static linking isn't the only policy, but only Linux platforms provide (fairly) mature dynamic build package managers. OSGeo4W - built on cygwin - has been tried by some over the years, because CRAN static linked binary packages may have different versions than say QGIS, GRASS or other Windows binaries. We have touched on the idea of proposing R-spatial as an OSGeo project, among other things to try to match the versions of key software components better. But having many alternatives for source install on macOS runs counter to this, we need to find a path that works - the previous go-to was Kyngchaos, but that is no longer a viable solution.
Second: All package managers seek to provide stability and homebrew is one of the most sophisticated ones out there. I honestly do not understand the general bashing against package managers here.
Package managers were debated on R-sig-mac (yes, I follow that too). If you use a package manager, that is your choice, but having CI for macOS (past and current releases) then gets multiplied by the number of package managers and environments (conda), etc. For central resources, say curl, package managers may be OK, but get stuck when some downstream packages either get dropped because they are not up to speed with say PROJ/GDAL, or PROJ/GDAL get held up because the packages using them are seen as important. This happens in all package managers, and is frequently discussed on PROJ and GDAL lists, amonng others by those responsible for package manager releases. The decisions are not easy, but we cannot be held back by package managers' policy choices. My guess is that some package in homebrew depends on GDAL 2.* and has not yet upgraded to be able to use GDAL 3.*; since GDAL 2.* can be built (although using the deprecated API) with PROJ >= 6, they let things slide. They should have chosen to stop PROJ at 5.2.*, avoiding the used of the deprecated API.
Third: What role does Apple play in all of this? I am not arguing that they made some decisions that did not necessarily enhance the dev experience on macOS. However, I do not see any of these having an effect on the spatial library stack, especially GDAL and PROJ. The current situation is that the **main** package manager on macOS, namely homebrew, has a temporary version situation of GDAL and PROJ that is (for no clear reason yet) blocked by the client package rgdal. Users on macOS can however use the formulas of the osgeo4mac (https://github.com/OSGeo/homebrew-osgeo4mac) tap which comes with PROJ7 and GDAL3 to solve these issues. ```r brew tap osgeo/osgeo4mac brew unlink gdal brew unlink proj brew install osgeo-gdal brew install osgeo-proj brew link osgeo-gdal brew link osgeo-proj ``` I am well aware that many users of spatial software are not developers in their every day life and should stick to binaries. However, there is a group that does source installs and there are CI checks that rely on proper source installations with the current stack of the main package managers on a platform. And exactly this group is blocked right now by blocking the rgdal installation at all, with a somewhat weak reasoning for this action.
Block is your expression, what is being required is that users actively opt in to using a very-short-life deprecated API. If I relax the requirement (I have already opened up for using the deprecated API, which I regard as potentially leading to positional accuracy loss, and certainly encouraging business as usual rather than active migration of workflows to WKT2 from Proj4 strings), I would be demonstrating crass irresponsibility with regard to users of rgdal, who need to know that these changes (in GDAL/PROJ) may impact their work.
In addition, arguing/ranting about specific platforms with points unrelated to the current issues is a thing that I absolutely dislike, getting me started arguing against it. I also do not like certain platforms and have personal favorites. However, I always check on all and make sure that everyone gets a pleasant experience on their platform, even if that's painful for me and costs a lot of time.
Pleasant experience is not something that carries much weight. Things need to work, and if user choices may lead to degradation through use of a deprecated API, I feel that they should be warned, and that that is more important than any pleaasant experience. For many years, OSX has been checked by CRAN, and this will continue. I do not accept that package maintainers have to resolve these problems (source installs of packages using external software), if they follow up CRAN requirements and make sure that the source packages continue to install and check cleanly with successive versions of the external software.
I am well aware that I might not be invited to the next imaginary party with my arguing here but maybe the discussion can make use of more real facts again, lower subjective views, and focus on providing support for everyone, on all platforms, without introducing something like a "platform racism" with semi-fake news.
I'm uncertain what you are referring to. I do not have a problem with platforms, I just see the role of package developers differently, as I explained above. At some point this year or next, the CRAN Windows and macOS binaries will have caught up (Windows already at PROJ 6.3.1 aand GDAL 3.0.4), so that for all users and developers but those insisting on source installs, the temporary difficulties now being experienced will pass. For those installing from source, when package managers catch up with the speed of change in PROJ and GDAL, things will calm down. Roger
Best, Patrick On 6 Jun 2020, at 15:45, Roger Bivand wrote:
On Sat, 6 Jun 2020, Ista Zahn wrote:
On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 7:47 PM Manuel Sp?nola <mspinola10 at gmail.com> wrote:
Dear list members, Sorry for the confusion, but with all these suggestions, what is the way to have the updated versions of the external software GEOS, PROJ, and GDAL for macOS users.
I think the current recommendation is "if you have to ask don't do it". Just wait for these to be updated in the OSX binary packages on CRAN.
Thanks, a much better way of saying this! We really would like to be able to help macOS users who see "Install from source?" and are tempted to choose "yes", but not only do we not have the resources or access to running systems, but also, at the moment, things seem very unpredictable. We do not think that environments are helpful, and many package managers do not seem to have sufficient focussed attention, which is understandable given Apple's gift for moving the goalposts. If users can install external software from source (macOS, Linux), they/we have a good deal of freedom. But this takes time, insight, and for many is problematic because their production system is blocked until the new versions are ready (PROJ and GDAL are C++11 or more, and take an order of magnitude longer to compile than just a few years ago). So for Windows and macOS, waiting for the CRAN binaries is a reasonable choice. Beyond this, we need to find ways of providing share/proj and share/gdal metadata files for all of the packages now using the PROJ and GDAL libraries, and of navigating the content download network for geodetic transformation grids available from PROJ 7. But that is another story ... Roger
Best, Ista
Manuel El vie., 5 jun. 2020 a las 14:31, Patrick Schratz (< patrick.schratz at gmail.com>) escribi?:
I am not sure if the part with use --with-proj_api="proj_api.h" for deprecated API Is of much help since c/p won?t work but the text let?s people assume that c/p could/should work. In fact, a full path to ?proj_api.h? is required? I still do not like this blocker and I still do not know if this combination causes serious issues in production or just limits new features. For the time being, using and linking osgeo-gdal (3.0.1) and osgeo-proj (7.0.1) works and can be used as a workaround until homebrew-core formulas catch up.
checks OK on PROJ 7.0.1 and GDAL 2.2.4
Again, since it was maybe caused by my typo a few mails ago: The homebred-core gdal version is at 2.4.4 and not 2.2.4. On 5 Jun 2020, at 13:29, Roger Bivand wrote:
The release candidate of rgdal_1.5-9 is ready for testing on R-forge: https://r-forge.r-project.org/R/?group_id=884 Those insisting on installing on PROJ >= 6 and GDAL < 3 must use configure argument --with-proj_api="proj_api.h"; with this used, this version builds with --no-build-vignettes and installs and checks OK on PROJ 7.0.1 and GDAL 2.2.4 with --with-proj_api="proj_api.h". Otherwise checked OK with PROJ 4.8.0, 4.9.2, 4.9.3 and 5.2.0 with GDAL 1.11.4; with PROJ 5.2.0 and GDAL 2.2.4, 2.3.2 and 2.4.2; with PROJ 6.3.2 and GDAL 3.0.4; with PROJ 7.0.1 and GDAL 3.0.4 and 3.1.0. All who have indicated issues with source installs are asked to try the release candidate and to report back here by midnight CEST Monday 8 June. If no indications are forthcoming, I'll assume that problems with 1.5-8 are resolved. Roger -- Roger Bivand Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2392-6140 https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=AWeghB0AAAAJ&hl=en
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-- *Manuel Sp?nola, Ph.D.* Instituto Internacional en Conservaci?n y Manejo de Vida Silvestre Universidad Nacional Apartado 1350-3000 Heredia COSTA RICA mspinola at una.cr <mspinola at una.ac.cr> mspinola10 at gmail.com Tel?fono: (506) 8706 - 4662 Personal website: Lobito de r?o <https://sites.google.com/site/lobitoderio/> Institutional website: ICOMVIS <http://www.icomvis.una.ac.cr/> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
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-- Roger Bivand Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2392-6140 https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=AWeghB0AAAAJ&hl=en_______________________________________________ R-sig-Geo mailing list R-sig-Geo at r-project.org
-- Roger Bivand Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2392-6140 https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=AWeghB0AAAAJ&hl=en